An example of an article storage facility such as one described above is disclosed in JP Publication of Application No. H11-168135 (Patent Document 1). The article storage facility of Patent Document 1 includes a plurality of storage sections for storing containers, and inactive gas supply passages which supply inactive gas, such as nitrogen gas and gaseous argon, to each of the plurality of storage sections, and is configured to supply inactive gas to inject portions through inactive gas supply passages, and to inject inactive gas from the inject portion to supply inactive gas to within each of the containers stored in the storage sections.
In the article storage facility of Patent Document 1 described above, inactive gas is supplied to a container when the container is stored in a storage section. This causes oxygen gas and vapor, etc., which are disadvantageous in terms of controlling quality of the semiconductor substrates, to be discharged out of the container, thus reducing the occurrences of any defects such as oxidization etc. of the semiconductor substrates stored in the container.
Thus, article storage facilities are known in which attempts are made to prevent degradation in the quality of the articles in containers by supplying inactive gas to the containers stored in the storage sections.